Fritz Hanstadt
In Worrals in the Wastelands, Fritz Hanstadt was a German navy officer and friend of Luftwaffe pilot Otto Rumey. Sometime around May 1939, before the war began, Hanstadt, then a German navy cadet, turned up in Canada with Otto Rumey. They both claimed to be political refugees who had fled Germany. They were allowed to stay and shortly thereafter departed Fort MacWilliam up the Chinokee River on a prospecting trip. It would later be learnt that they were in fact spies on a mission to set up a secret U-boat base in the north of Hudson Bay. When war broke out, Hanstadt escaped from Canada and made his way back to Germany and served with distinction in the U-boat service, rising to command a submarine fleet. With the war not progressing well, Hanstadt and Rumey made plans for the future. During Hanstadt and Rumey's earlier sojourn in Canada, they had discovered and extracted a little gold from Lake Desolation. This formed the basis of their postwar nestegg. As the war ended, Rumey flew off to Canada with Anna Shultz and Max Lowenstadt. The plan was for Rumey and his party to extract as much gold as possible and then Hanstadt would come and pick them up in his submarine. However, by the time Hanstadt arrived at Lake Desolation, Rumey had been killed, by an accident, so his killer Anna Shultz managed to convince him. Unknown to Shultz and Wolfe, the remaining members of Rumey's party, Rumey and Hanstadt never intended the gold for themselves. Being committed Nazis, they had all along planned to bring the gold to South America where surviving members of the Nazi Party had taken refuge. They wanted to use the money to fund party activities. This caused some tension to Shultz and Wolfe who wanted the gold for themselves and led to a reluctance to use Hanstadt as a means of escape from Canada. In the event, the dilemma never presented itself. Just prior to Hanstadt's arrival, Captain John Larwood and Erik Hedin had stolen and hidden the gold on the grounds that at least half belonged to them and the rest to the Canadian government. Hanstadt accompanied Shultz to retrieve the gold from Larwood and Hedin and, in the process, walked into an ambush set up by Worrals. Shultz was arrested and subsequently mortally wounded in an escape attempt. Hanstadt was allowed to go free as Worrals did not want to encumber herself with another prisoner and she had no orders about him in any case. She did ask him to promise, if he should leave, not to take Wolfe, also wanted for war crimes, with him. Hanstadt stuck to the letter of his promise and Wolfe was still there when Worrals returned for him, although by then the U-boat commander had shot him. Hanstadt was never seen again. It was suspected that he and his men had headed back to their submarine, but by then the R.C.A.F. had bombed and destroyed the base and sunk his boat. Reconnaissance flights between Lake Desolation and the base failed to discover any sign of his party. Category:People Category:Worrals characters